Samajwadi Party seems to have revived the riots business in UP

Last year, something remarkable happened in the electoral politics of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, home to around 200 million people, the same as the entire population of Brazil. Yes, of course, the Samajwadi Party (SP) swept out rival Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to seize power in Lucknow, but that is not the main point here.

Through June and July of 2012, UP held elections to 11,816 positions in urban local bodies, out of a total of 11,955. The SP and the BSP opted out of these elections, though in the run up to the polls, many independents claimed to stand for one or the other party. The Congress and the BJP did contest, but fared miserably.

The BJP lost 12 seats in the corporations, 173 in municipalities and 151 in urban panchayats compared to its 2006 tally. The Congress lost all three mayoral posts it had held, lost 51 seats in corporations, 68 in municipalities and 91 in urban panchayats.

After elections, successful independents banded together as SP or BSP and took control of the urban bodies without the pre-poll, intra-party hassles of having to select candidates and distribute tickets. Before elections, that had been one issue that had driven deep divisions in the national parties, as Congressmen and BJP-wallahs bickered among themselves for tickets.

But who were the real gainers? In a perceptive paper, published in the Economic and Political Weekly last year, A K Verma of the Christ Church College, Kanpur, notes that the real gainers in these urban elections were Muslims.

Though they make up 18.5% of the population of UP, Muslims are under-represented in both the assembly as well as in the Lok Sabha. In the 2012 assembly polls, which the SP won, around 17% of the elected people were Muslims, a big jump from the sub-14% figure of 2007.

In Lok Sabha elections, the representation of Muslims has actually worsened. From nearly 14% in 2004, only 8.7% elected candidates were Muslim in 2009.

Twice as Nice

But the municipal elections changed all that. Muslim candidates won a little more than 31% of total number of positions. This is a remarkable sign of empowerment: to have an overrepresentation amounting to nearly double the actual population percentage.

Varma points out that this is not a regional phenomenon but spread evenly all over the state. The highest representation of Muslims is in Rohilkhand, followed by Awadh, west UP, east UP and the north-eastern districts. In areas like Bundelkhand, where the Muslim population is below 7%, elected representatives amounted to nearly 9%.

Along with Verma, we can only speculate about the reasons behind the massive over-representation of Muslims in urban bodies and their under-representation in the assembly and Parliament. One reason could be that unlike assembly or Lok Sabha polls, where seats are reserved for Dalits, backward castes and tribes, there are few or no reserved seats in elections to urban bodies.

Nevertheless, we have to admire the empowerment of Muslims that has taken place, and the opportunities in trade, business, education and healthcare that can open up from having a controlling role in running the affairs of a town or a mohalla. But there can be a dark side to this sunny story: the jealousy of those, like Dalits and other backward castes, who have been left behind in the process of municipal politics.

This could have been one of the triggers for the violent riots in Muzaffarnagar, a town with a population of 4.9 lakh in western UP. Remember, this is the area, Rohilkhand, where the Muslim population is 34%, but where their over-representation in urban bodies is also the highest at 53.5%. As Muslim aspirations, visibility and opportunities increase, the chances of clashes with communities like the Jats could increase.

Sinister Startups

But it would be a terrible mistake to argue that Muslim empowerment will inevitably lead to their persecution. Paul R Brass, an academic who has spent a lifetime studying western UP and riots in India, says that in many places, there are people who specialise in starting and organising riots. These riotpreneurs actually stand to gain from the violence and arson that follows.

SP’s Scary Century

Muzaffarnagar has not had a long history of riots, but nearby Saharanpur, Meerut and Aligarh do. Many reports of the recent riots mentioned outsiders who came in for a Jat assembly as inciters of the violence.

As elections approach, UP can become a pressure cooker of communal politics. The empowerment of all communities will continue, as will petty arguments and jealousies that come from it. But it is the job of the administration, especially the SP government, to ensure that no riots are tolerated and to crack down heavily on any attempt to disrupt the peace.

In her five years in power, Mayawati’s BSP made sure that there was not one incident of rioting or intercaste violence in UP. In only one year, under the SP’s benevolent gaze, there have been around 100 riots and caste clashes in the state. That ought to signal something to voters.